


Southern Latitudes

by sophistry



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender, Master and Commander - Patrick O'Brian
Genre: Comment Fic, Crack, Crossover, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-11-16
Updated: 2011-11-16
Packaged: 2017-10-26 03:50:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,160
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/278361
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sophistry/pseuds/sophistry
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Only then it turned, do you see; it turned to look at me -- smoked my approach, I should think -- and its phiz was not that of a penguin at all!"</p><p>Prompt: Aubreyad folks meet waterbenders.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Southern Latitudes

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted [here](http://copinggoggles.livejournal.com/564432.html?thread=3372496#t3372496). I... yeah. To anyone who clicked on this fic expecting something of substance: I am so sorry.

"Upon my life, Stephen," said Jack, reaching back to help his friend. "As you see me now, there it was. And I should say I have seen more penguins in my life than you have had hot dinners, and very like one, it was. Very like. Only then it turned, do you see; it turned to look at me -- smoked my approach, I should think -- and its phiz was not that of a penguin at all!"

"Indeed," Stephen replied, grasping Jack's hand carefully and contriving nevertheless to slide down the side of the ice-bank and land in a drift. Picking himself up: "It is not that I doubt what you say, joy, only that -- " He paused, uncertain, but Jack's questioning silence provided no relief. Inwardly, Stephen sighed. He did not mean to be disagreeable; rather, he was wholly touched that Jack had thought to relieve the very great tedium of waiting for the waters to thaw around the ship, to melt, and release them once more into the sea from their icy prison. There was no immediate danger, of course -- they were yet well-stocked, and the vast numbers of seals and gulls on the shore should sustain them even if they were not. But the days, clad in the endless white of snow and ice, seemed interminable to Stephen, the more so since the Captain, obliged by the inclement temperatures (and no small urging from the ship's surgeon himself, the sick-berth overflowing with frostbitten extremities, with knocks and bruises of every sort gained when cold fingers could no longer grip ropes, or shrouds, or tackles), had suspended the regularities of ship-board life by which they might be measured. And indeed, there was this: however he might swathe himself in oilskins and whatever meagre furs the ship could provide, the cold had never agreed with Dr Maturin, a creature of heat and sun since his childhood in Catalonia. Of late, in this frozen world, he had found himself more than usually snappish and ill-tempered.

"I mean only to say that," Stephen began again, wondering how he might suggest that in such a landscape, a seaman's imagination might be to his disadvantage -- how he might delicately propose that his friend's keen eye had been deceived by some treacherous eddy of snow or trick of the light. To his very great fortune, he was saved from certain failure by the sudden appearance of a small black shape in the middle distance. “Oh!” he cried softly, pointing, and Jack’s face broke out into a smile.

In point of fact, the apparition was not Jack’s mysterious penguin at all; but no sooner had the two of them crept close enough to perceive that the squat, waddling shape was a child than it disappeared, vanishing entirely from view. Alarmed, and crying out, they leapt from their concealment (a shallow dip in the ice; poor enough concealment, in all conscience), hurrying towards the place where it had been. They were amazed, fairly amazed, to see the ground open up beneath them -- no deep, sharp crevice, but a long, sloping valley, entirely hidden from above by the unchanging whiteness of the snow-plains. And there, below them, the child pelting away at its stumpy pace towards a settlement of ice: a dozen ice huts, with rounded ice roofs, and the whole enclosed by a high ice wall.

Having waited some while, and discerned no great activity amongst the inhabitants of the ice-village, Stephen wondered aloud whether they might not have been seen at all, and then (with a poor show of indifference) further proposed that they should venture to introduce themselves; perhaps the ice-dwellers might be of help in the matter of Jack's bird. Jack, for his part, was not as easy in his mind as he might wish -- but then it was only a very small village. A number of shapes of much the same proportions as their unwitting guide flitted from hut to hut, whilst others sat in groups of two or three around meagre fires, no doubt engaged in the sort of busywork common to the women (for women Jack assumed them to be) of every tribe Jack had ever encountered. Determining, as he often did, that the best approach should naturally encompass both friendliness and confidence in equal measure, the pair of them were not halfway to the fortifications (Jack maintaining a solicitous grip on Stephen's elbow during the steeper, slipperier portions of the slope) when he raised his voice in a great, booming salute.

For some moments, there was no answer. And then, in comical unison, a dozen small heads peeped into view over the top of the ice. Jack hallooed again, Stephen adding to it with a wave that came close to unbalancing them both, but they received no response; the children merely continued to watch in dark-eyed silence as they came nearer.

"Jack," Stephen said presently, "perhaps you might not cry out again so very loudly. Your monstrous height and bulk no doubt alarm them, to say nothing of the shocking colour of your hair." To be sure, Jack had left off his hat -- he had navigated the ice mountains of the high southern latitudes often enough since boyhood, and their long sojourn on this white and uncharted peninsula had acclimatised him -- but he felt its absence keenly now, and raised a hand to his head, somewhat offended.

"My hair is not shocking," he muttered.

"Honey," Stephen replied, "in such a landscape, surrounded by every white and blue, and of course the uninspiring grey of the seals, your hair is quite garish. Sure, it is the very -- "

What it was, Jack did not have the good fortune of finding out: Stephen’s words were cut off quite abruptly, first by a shrill, clear ululation, beginning with one child and taken up by the others, and then with even greater efficiency by the remarkably well-aimed snowball which exploded prettily upon Stephen’s surprised face.

The children quieted, struck dumb by their own daring; Stephen, it was clear, could think of nothing to say, being quite occupied with retrieving the large gobbets of snow that had found their way beneath his collar; for some time, there was silence. Into this silence, Jack finally cleared his throat, fairly beaming with happiness.

"Why, Stephen," he said, blue eyes twinkling and rapidly disappearing into a reddening face. "Ain't you amazed? Shocking my hair may be, but I had hardly expected such a _cold_ welcome." Surprisingly, wholly unexpectedly, there came an answering titter from the ramparts -- but it was all but drowned out as Captain Aubrey set the valley echoing with his mirth.

* * *

"Frozen?" asked the chieftain's daughter; a slight figure of a girl, nut-brown hands folded demurely in her lap, but her own blue eyes alight behind her braids with the same brightness Stephen knew so well in Jack's: the fierce, savage hope of a prize. "I see. I think -- I think I may be able to help you."


End file.
